Traditional Mash

I don’t normally eat white flesh potatoes due to their oxidative effects which in turn increases inflammation. However, that doesn’t put white flesh potatoes on the complete red light food map, but more on the caution side.

During intense training, exercise, and competition, we want to decrease all factors of oxidative stress, increase anti-oxidants, and boost recovery. White flesh potatoes may work against us in our desire to achieve optimal health, yet I do not want to demonize them. Consumption can come on a moderate basis, and theres ways we can not make their oxidative effects more pronounced.

“Compared To What?”

First, lets go deeper and darker down the potato line. Choosing a darker flesh potato has more anti-oxidant properties. Sweet potatoes with orange flesh are a better choice than white potatoes, but Purple Sweet Potatoes are best. This is where we can hit Strategy 005:

Strategy 005: When choosing a food, its not whether or not its healthy as it own, but you have ask the question, “compared to what?”

For example, grains are good, rice is a grain, and since grains are good, rice is there fore good–Right? But there are a lot of different types of rice. Is white rice, good? Now you see, brown rice is better, but even red rice is better than brown and black rice is better that red.

Rice in general? What about Quinoa, barley, or oats? So, you can see you can go general or specific, and you can apply that generally to all forms of fruits, veggies, beans, legumes, starches, nuts, and seeds. Specifically you can ask the same about apples type, cabbage color, and even different teas.

Perception Over Perfection

Okay, this looks confusing at first. It make soy think well I don’t know whats healthier and I just give up.

Don’t be that person. . .

This isn’t about the perfection, and a white potato is not going to kill you! The starch, fiber, and nutrition content seem to balance out to some degree. Even eating white rice is not all that bad compared to eating no grains at all. And so this brings us to Strategy 006:

Strategy 006: The best plant food is not the healthiest one. The best is the one that you will eat the most of.

In another instance, cooking method could follow the same methodology as choosing healthier foods in Strategy 007:

Strategy 007: The healthiest way to prepare a food is the way that you will eat it the most.

Everyone thinks eating plants is so restrictive, but these strategies make it more inclusive than selective and leave you room to grow.

Now, of course there are some TERMS AND CONDITIONS to these statements. We’re talking about WHOLE PLANT FOODS that these guidelines follow. We’re not being sympathetic to eating mash potatoes and duping a ton of butter on them and saying, “hey, this is the best way or me.” That just is not going to fly.

Stay within the realm of applying these strategies to Whole-foods, centered around Plant-Based sources.